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    The Track Of The Cat
    The Track Of The Cat
    The Track Of The Cat
    Ebook557 pages13 hours

    The Track Of The Cat

    By Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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    About this ebook

    Clark's classic novel is a compelling tale of four men who fear a marauding mountain lion but swear to conquer it. It is also a story of violent human emotions--love and hate, hope and despair--and of the perpetual conflict between good and evil.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Nevada Press
    Release dateApr 20, 2018
    ISBN9781943859955
    The Track Of The Cat

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    • 4/5
      This 1949 western novel, laid in Nevada, concerns an angst-riddden dysfunctional ranching family consisting of a dour mother, a drunken father, three brothers, and a sister. A panther kills some of the stock and the book details the reffort to kill and avoid the evil animal. The book was consitently interest-holding until the long account of Curt's effort re the panther evenually palled and the book came to a nondramatic end. I read Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident on March 24, 1953, with much appreciation, and that is why I now read this book--which did not turn out to be as good.

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    The Track Of The Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark

    32

    PART 1

    1

    Arthur was the first in the Bridges’ ranch house to hear the faraway crying, like muted horns a little out of tune. The wind turned and came down over the shoulder of the Sierra against the house, shaking the log wall beside his bunk and hurling the snow across the window above him. It let go and slid away south, wailing under the eaves. The house relaxed and the snow whispered twice by itself, and then the faint, melancholy blowing came from the north.

    Arthur rolled over to lie with his back to the wall, and curled his arm up over his head, as if to protect himself from an attack he couldn’t fight against. The sound like horns sank away; the gale surged back over it, roaring through the pines on the mountain, and he didn’t wake. In the shallower sleep that followed, however, the sound became a human voice crying out in despair.

    It was the voice of someone he knew and loved, but the cry had come so unexpectedly, and he had been so deeply moved by the fear in it, that he couldn’t remember who. He stood there listening, trying to close his mind against the continuous thunder of the wind, in order to hear that thin, plaintive cry if it came again. He had to know who it was.

    He was standing in deep snow on the edge of a very high cliff, and the gale, laden with snow, was streaming across him out of the northwest. He was wearing the cowhide parka the mother had made him for winter riding, the one his brother Curt made the same old jokes about every winter, when he first put it on, calling him priest or monk because it had a deep, peaked hood, like a cowl, or old woman because, he said, the hood looked like a poke bonnet, or medicine man because the red-and-white hair of the steer had been left on the hide. There was a heavy, lumberjack mitten on his right hand, but his left hand was bare. The bare hand was cold and he could feel the snow flakes driven against it. He wondered what he’d done with the mitten. He had drawn the hood of the parka as far forward as he could, to keep a breathing space between him and the flying snow. Only now and then a few flakes from the eddy about him turned in and touched him lightly and coldly upon his face above the beard. Within this sanctuary, he listened for the voice. He believed that if he heard the voice just once more, he would know who was calling, and could guess what the trouble was.

    At the same time, he knew there was nothing he could do. He didn’t dare move, for fear the wind should blow him off the edge of the cliff, or the snow and ice under him prove to be only an overhanging eave, and shear away at the shift of his weight. Even if he dared to move, it wouldn’t do any good, because he didn’t know where he was or which way to turn in order to get down off the cliff.

    He believed that he stood above the western edge of the home valley, the Aspen Creek Valley, and not far south of the ranch. The voice had certainly called from below and north, and the ranch was the only place in the valley. There was nobody in the valley to call him except someone at the ranch, one of his family, or Joe Sam. But he knew he couldn’t be on the edge of the valley. The only cliff in the mountains all around from which one could look out onto the valley was the one at the upper end of the Aspen Creek itself, and that was five or six miles north of the ranch, and not nearly so high and open as the one he was standing on.

    He didn’t know the mountain behind him, either. He could look at this mountain without turning his head or drawing back the hood, and he looked up at it through clear, thin air, too, although the abyss at his feet was filled with a river of snow pouring south in the wind. A vast, concave snowfield rose behind him from the edge of the cliff, and out of it reared the mountain, two lofty spires of pale stone together on the north, the northernmost slight, and carried like a child at the shoulder of the other, and a third peak, lower and blunter, a kind of half dome, apart from them on the south. There were glaciers between the peaks, the northern one narrow and pointing upward, the southern one wide and curved at the top, so that its point reached down and north into the snowfield. The mountain was thinly marked with snow in its crevices, and belted by a long, narrow cloud, which hid the summit of the blunt peak, but let the two spires rise through it and into the black sky.

    This mountain moved Arthur profoundly, though he didn’t know why. Also, it seemed to him in some way familiar, as the cliff he stood upon reminded him of the Aspen Creek cliff. Yet it wasn’t a mountain a man would forget, once he’d seen it, and he couldn’t remember ever having seen it before. It seemed to him to belong somewhere as far away as the Andes or the Himalayas or the moon.

    He stopped thinking about the mountain, and his mind, with no purpose to work at, moved feebly against extinction. He wondered once more why his left hand was bare. He knew then that the hand was numb, and thrust it awkwardly into the pocket of the parka. There it encountered a small, familiar shape, one of the little figures he was always whittling because it pleased him to see them come out of the wood, and because whittling was the way he kept a hold on what was real while he was thinking. He’d been whittling, that was it. He was left-handed, and he’d taken off the mitten to whittle. He felt carefully over the little, wooden figure with his stiff fingers. It was a crouching mountain lion, and not quite finished. Of course. It was Joe Sam’s black panther, the private, stalking god he had invented to mean the end of things. The first snow had begun, hadn’t it? It was snowing now. And he was wearing the parka, wasn’t he? He made a new black panther for Joe Sam every year, before the first snow came. The old Indian carried one on him all the time until the first storm was over, in a buckskin medicine pouch, decorated with porcupine quills and hung by a rawhide thong around his neck. Sometimes he wore it in later storms too. It was impossible to guess just what made Joe Sam decide the black panther was around again. Only it was always around in the first storm. So that was it. This was the first storm, but it was early this year, only October. He hadn’t expected the first snow so early, and the cat wasn’t finished. Joe Sam hadn’t made his medicine against the cat, and it was still free to hunt where he was. That was the danger which threatened the one with the beloved voice. The black panther was stalking the beloved one down there. He must get down some way, and help, or at least give warning.

    It came to him, in this urgent need, that if he turned north, he wouldn’t have far to go to get off the cliff onto a slope of shale he could go down. He turned very carefully upon the doubtful edge, but even as he turned, the voice cried out again. His body, already cold and tense, jerked at the sound. He opened his mouth to call back that he was coming, but then made only a terrified wail like the one he wanted to answer. The snow eave had given way, a long, jagged crack opening as suddenly as lightning along the edge of the granite, and he was falling helplessly into the abyss. It wasn’t snowing in the abyss now, and he could see in the clear darkness. He could see the broken pieces of the ice edge swooping down after him like phantom birds of prey. One of them was so close upon him that even as he fell, turning slowly in the air, he put out a hand to ward it off.

    His bare left hand was touching something cold and smooth, but it wasn’t ice. Extending his fingers, he moved them along the surface, and found it curved. He cupped his hand over the smooth curve, and smiled in the darkness, uncertainly mocking the remnants of the fear that still made him breathe like a man who has been running hard. It was an old test with him, this touching something real. He was awake now. His fingertips, exploring gently in above the peeled log, touched the flat, clay caulking. He felt the powdery surface of the clay rub off on his fingertips, soft as the dust off a moth’s wing.

    He was still listening for the cry, though. He was lying in his bunk against the west wall of the bunk-room, and Curt and young Hal were in there with him. He couldn’t hear the cry now, but he could hear Curt and Hal breathing, and he could tell by their breathing that they were still asleep. Hal, across the room by the east wall, was breathing softly and evenly and slowly, and Curt, against the north wall, was snoring. Perhaps there hadn’t really been any cry either.

    While he listened, Curt snorted twice, and muttered angrily. The leather straps of his bunk creaked, and there was a soft thud as his knee or elbow struck through the quilts against the wall.

    Arthur smiled a little, and thought, Always fighting something, even in your sleep. Or did you hear something too?

    He kept on listening, though, in spite of himself. The rest of the dream was letting go of him now, but the cry remained real, and he kept on listening for it. His hand moved farther along the log. It was icy cold. There was no sound of flame lapping in the old stove either. He turned his head on the pillow and saw only darkness, no lights shining in the cracks of the stove, or moving in their small, soft dance upon the floor. It must be very late, if the fire had burned out; it must be getting on toward morning.

    The melancholy left by the dream was renewed, and the feeling of time gone by without any good from it. He realized that he had been much younger when he stood on the cliff in the snow. His beard had been softer, and his body had felt full and powerful in the warm parka. Even his fear had been cleaner and more active, and that great love which he had sent out to the owner of the unknown voice had been a younger man’s love. He had been about twenty in the dream, perhaps, about the age he had been when they came to the valley. He’d felt the life like that, in his body inside his garments, when he was twenty. Now he was twice that, and he felt long and thin and tired in his bunk, and the quilts weighed heavily upon him. The dream weighed heavily upon him too. He didn’t come and go between the two worlds as confidently as he had when he was twenty, never confusing the events of one with the events of the other. Now he was still trying to remember who it was that had cried out like that in the dream. He kept listening, and he kept trying to remember. It seemed important to him that he should remember.

    Perhaps it was Gwen Williams, he thought, and mocked himself with the faint smile in the dark. I forgot her. I thought of the family and Joe Sam, but I forgot she was here too, now. Wouldn’t Hal like it if I told him I was dreaming about his girl already, when she only got here last night?

    I don’t know, though, he thought more seriously. Seems like it was a woman’s voice, but then, it would be. And a voice sounds different when it screams. You can’t tell.

    The wind came down again, shaking the log wall and his bunk against it, beating under the eaves, and throwing the snow like sand across the window over him. He knew that it must have been snowing for a long time already. There was a cold, thick quiet in the bunk-room that could come only from deep snow outside. He wasn’t surprised, though. He’d been out on the range since early the morning before, helping with the fall tally, and driving strays down out of the aspen canyons onto the yellowing meadows. He had felt the wind growing stronger and colder all morning, and in the afternoon, he had shivered in the saddle as the clouds, streaming southeastward out of the Sierra, had darkened the valley.

    Then suddenly his attention came to a single point and he was just listening, because that cry he had heard in his dream was in the wind again, and he was sure he was awake now. It came faintly within the deeper blowing of the storm, and it was like the faraway blowing of several horns not quite tuned together and not quite steady. Then the wind drew off, and the blowing departed with it. A few last flakes of snow scratched on the window, and the wind rose into its hollow roaring across the mountain, not touching the house.

    Arthur knew what the sound was now. His mind came wholly over to the waking side of the border, and the unhappiness left in him by the dream became a foreboding, and also a disappointment. Slowly he turned back the quilts, and pushed himself upright, and swung around to sit on the edge of his bunk. A wide plank of the floor was cold under his feet. He stood up and moved slowly forward, holding his hands out ahead of him, until he felt the edge of the table. He groped over the top of the table and found the matches and struck one. Lifting the chimney off the lamp, he held the little flame to the wick. It took slowly. When the wick was burning clear across, he flipped out the match and tossed it toward the stove and set the chimney back on. The flame sank away, and then, as he turned the wick slowly up, it grew and brightened and became steady, and the shadows slunk back into their waiting places under the bunks and the table and behind the stove. Shining curves and points were picked out by the light, the silver conchas on Harold’s dress chaps hanging at the head of his bunk, the nickel edge of the stove top, the big buckle of Curt’s old leather bat-wings on their peg by the kitchen door, and the butt of his six-gun, and the row of little brass discs in his cartridge belt. The shining points winked like observing eyes around Arthur, and a tiny lamp burned mysteriously in space outside the window over his bunk.

    His face showed clearly at the center of the light, thin, with a high, narrow forehead and high cheekbones and a thin, dark beard with a narrow gray streak going down through it from each corner of his mouth. He straightened up slowly, and the one color the close lamp had given his face became two colors, weathered darkness to just above his eyebrows, and then white forehead his hat had bleached all summer. He looked at his brothers. Hal was sleeping with his head on his arm and his face turned toward the light. His arm was out straight on the pillow, and his big hand hung limply over the edge of the bunk. His wide, beardless face was calm, and his tousled hair shone gold in the light. Curt, sleeping with his face to the wall, was only a thick shape under the red-and-white quilt, and a dark head on the pillow.

    Arthur moved away from the light toward Curt’s bunk. He was a grotesque figure, with his long hair thick at the back, and his wrists and long, narrow hands protruding from the sleeves of the winter underwear he slept in. His shadow loomed over Curt, and then, as he advanced, grew shorter and narrower. He moved slowly, and as if still in a dream. His shadow came down off the rafters onto the wall, and dwindled there, and finally, when he stood beside Curt’s bunk, lay only across Curt’s head and shoulders. The shadow darkened Curt’s sleep, or the near presence oppressed him. He stirred uneasily, and muttered thick words of protest. Arthur waited, looking down at him. He didn’t know that he was waiting. He was thinking about the mountain in his dream. It still seemed to him that he should remember where he had seen that mountain before.

    The wind turned down from the Sierra again and leaned heavily upon the house and pummeled it for a moment, and then failed, and beat off south under the eaves, and once more the faint, melancholy blowing came after it. Arthur lifted his head to listen, and then drew a deep breath and sighed and leaned over and put his hand gently on Curt’s shoulder.

    Curt, he said softly. Curt, wake up.

    Harold, with the light shining in his face, heard the voice like a whispering, and woke up. He didn’t move, but only opened his eyes and looked at once at Arthur bending over Curt, and after a moment asked quietly, What’s up, Art?

    The wind was beginning to play under the eaves again. Arthur, still with his hand on Curt’s shoulder, looked around and grinned. Awake already? Thought you’d need your sleep this morning.

    Harold grinned too. Slept plenty. The old man wouldn’t go to bed till we did. What’s wrong?

    Maybe I’m just hearing things, Arthur said. You listen.

    He raised his left hand from the wrist without raising his arm and pointed to the west wall. When the wind shifts.

    Harold raised himself onto his elbow and lay listening. He was going to speak once, but Arthur hushed him with the shy left hand. At last the wind swelled out of its fluttering, and thundered across the house. It spent itself and retreated south, and came again, less violently and almost straight from the north. The sound like faraway horns was in it, swelling and shrinking in the gusts.

    Something’s at ’em up there, Harold said quickly, and swung out from under his covers and stood up.

    Arthur nodded and turned back to Curt, saying, Curt, wake up, and rocking him gently by the shoulder.

    Harold was pulling on his shirt already. He grinned and said, Look out you don’t get a fist in the teeth.

    Arthur nodded without looking around. He was fighting the wall when I woke up, he said, and went on rocking Curt, and said, more loudly, Curt.

    Curt muttered, and struck loosely at the hand on his shoulder. Then he turned over suddenly and lifted himself on both elbows and stared up at Arthur. The down-curved wings of his big, dark moustache made an enormous, grim mouth in the shadow.

    Huh? he asked loudly. What the hell now?

    Arthur straightened up and made the little, left-hand sign to him to listen, but Harold, sitting on the edge of his bunk to pull on his socks, said, Cows are bawlin’. Something’s at ’em.

    But the wind turned up without losing strength this time, lifting into the pines with a roar like a heavy surf, and the creaking in the walls died away and there was nothing else after it.

    Curt squinted his eyes as if he could see the sound, and when there was only the gentle sliding of snow at the window, said, For God’s sake, do you have to wake me up to hear your dreams? Go back to bed, and rolled under the covers with his face to the wall again.

    It’s no dream, Harold said.

    You only hear it when the wind’s right, Arthur said.

    Curt twisted over onto one elbow and stared up at him again. There was no sleep in his eyes now; they were wide and unsteady with rage.

    Look, he said, growling in the thick column of his throat, all I want is a little sleep. If you have to hold somebody’s hand, hold Hal’s. He’s hearing things too.

    The wind turned down toward the house and deepened again, and Arthur, with his head bent to listen, so that he smiled at nothing between himself and Curt, once more made the little sign with his left hand.

    Harold said, Listen now, and sat motionless with one boot in his hands.

    The long, melancholy blowing came down behind the wind.

    Curt was out of his bunk and standing before the wind had lifted onto the mountain again.

    How long’s that been going on? he asked, accusing them both with the question.

    Arthur, still smiling, shrugged his shoulders a little, but Harold said quickly, We’ve only been awake a minute.

    And doing what?

    I thought you’d want to know, Arthur said.

    You thought, Curt said. The hell you did, ever. He pushed past Arthur, saying, Why the hell wouldn’t I? and took his clothes off the wall and threw them onto the bunk and began to dress.

    Get your clothes on, he told Arthur. Do you think it’ll wait for us?

    Arthur stood there with his head turned away, as if he were still listening, but for something farther away than the bawling of the cattle now. He was close to remembering whose voice it was that had called to him out of the chasm below the cliff.

    Curt had his shirt and pants on already. He sat down on the edge of his bunk and pulled his boots on, and stood up and began to pound the heels against the floor to get them clear on. He saw Arthur still standing there listening, and asked sharply, What ails you now? Gettin’ Joe Sam’s second sight? He picked up the scarred bat-wing chaps, and, when Arthur didn’t reply, stood holding them and staring at him.

    Finally he said softly, I bet it’s that black cat, eh? That awful black painter, big as a horse, and you can see through it? Sure, he murmured. What the hell’s the use of hunting a cat as big as a horse, especially when it hates men worse than anything, and lives forever, and a slug just goes through it and it keeps a-comin’? That it?

    He pulled on the chaps, wrenching angrily at them when they caught. Do you see the black cat out there, medicine man? he asked, his voice louder. He jerked the big nickel buckle of the chaps to lock it. So you’d like to go back to bed?

    Arthur looked at him then, still smiling, but as if at something else. I had a dream, he said. I was just trying to remember . . .

    You had a dream, Curt said. He had a dream, he told Harold. Look, dreamer, he said to Arthur, I know what really ails you, if you don’t. You know damn well it’s a cat, and no dream cat either, and you’re afraid dear pussy’ll get hurt. By God, if I don’t believe you’d give ’em our best beef, and bottle-feed the cubs too, if you could.

    Arthur smiled, and studied him with his eyes in the way Curt couldn’t stand. I might at that, he said. Slaughter for the joy of it is a thing comes back on you, in time. It’s a matter of numbers. The cats were here when we came, and still there were more deer than there are now.

    Curt made a short laugh, and would have answered, but again the wind turned down and struck the house like a slide of earth, and the three men looked away from one another and listened. The flame of the lamp shook and dwindled in an errant draft, and their three shadows danced in changing shapes on the walls. The wind went off crying under the eaves. The flame rose again, and the three shadows became steady, but this time no sound of the bawling followed.

    Curt said suddenly and loudly, Yeah, and the Indians was here first too, preacher, and they’re goin’. What’s left of ’em in these parts? Joe Sam. One crazy old Piute that thinks he’s a hundred, and chuck full of kid’s lies, that’s what’s left. And good riddance, I say. What the hell good are they? And the same for your cats. You and your dreams, he said contemptuously. "Yes, and the old man and his wonderful Comstock; the good old days. You’re both the same kind now. Can’t see what’s in front of your nose, but, oh, the good, old days. Well, once I’m out of here, you can have your good, old days; you can hand-feed your cats, if you want to, yes, and your Joe Sams too. You can marry your goddam dreams. Lay ’em every night and see what it gets you, besides weak knees and whining in the morning. And don’t worry, once I get a stake big enough to work on, I’ll get out of here, too, so fast you won’t even see me goin’.

    But until then, by Christ, he said more heavily, making each word count, we’ll raise cattle, not dreams, and we’ll kill whatever kills cattle. Get that, and don’t FORget it. You can breed your dreams later, and welcome. I’ll have better things to do.

    Meaning if one Comstock’s used up, there’ll be another? Arthur asked softly. A bigger and better one?

    You goddam right there will, Curt said, for the guy that knows it when he sees it, and has the cartwheels to buck it. Is 1900 the end of the world, old whisker-face?

    It’ll do for the end of one, anyway, Arthur said, and then, smiling, and as if to stop the quarrel, Well, a life’s a life, and you can’t buy more than one, no matter how many Comstocks you own. I’ll stick to ranching the dreams then, and thanks.

    You think there won’t be more, eh?

    One kind or another, one man at a time, or in little gangs, sure, plenty, I guess, Arthur said slowly, as if thinking it out for himself, and seeing it as it would be. But for everybody? No. That was a kind of dream too, a big, fat one, and it’s over. We’ve gone from ocean to ocean, Curt, burning and butchering and cutting down and plowing under and digging out, and now we’re at the end of it. Virginia City’s where the fat dream winked out. Now we turn back.

    So there’s nothing left now, you think? Curt asked.

    Arthur shook his head. There’s us, he said. We can start digging into ourselves now; we can plow each other under. But not so many men will like that for a hope. Even a good dream, backed up, turns nightmare, and this wasn’t a very good one to start with. A belly dream.

    It isn’t all like that, Art, Harold said.

    You’re damned shootin’ it isn’t, Curt said.

    No, Arthur said, looking down, and speaking as if to himself again. Or it wasn’t, anyway. There were good dreams too, little ones that got swallowed up by the fat one. And even the fat one made some good lives, before it got backed up.

    You’ll eat air from now on, I suppose, Curt said.

    Somebody’s going to have to, Arthur said, and I’m built for it, I guess. He grinned and pulled out the slack of his underwear from his flat stomach.

    Curt made the short laugh. I’ll leave you the air then. That’s a divvy I’d like fine.

    Arthur let the slack of his underwear back slowly, and peered at Curt from under his eyebrows, still grinning. And the dreams, Curt? Not the fat one. All the little ones?

    And all the dear little dreams, Curt said. I don’t want anybody sayin’ I’m close-fisted with my own brother.

    Arthur nodded. Thanks. They’re going to multiply.

    Curt laughed again. Well, you should know, he said. I told you he’d breed ’em, he said to Harold. Every night he’s at it, and most days too. His own herd bull. I don’t see how he stands it. But for now . . . he began, looking at Arthur again, but the wind returned, thundering, and he broke off, and they listened. The wind gave way to the lull they were waiting for, but there was no blowing of the sad horns.

    I’m gettin’ as bad as you are, Curt said to Arthur, and turned to the pegs by the door and took down his mackinaw, a bright red one with a wide, black stripe around the middle and on the sleeves. He took down his scarf and his big hat with the rattlesnake skin band on it too.

    Get your clothes on, will you? he said, with his hand on the latch of the kitchen door. You’ve laid enough dreams tonight to . . . He stopped there and stood listening. In the kitchen, someone was moving the stove lids.

    Kee-rist, Curt said, but not loudly. We’ve woke the old lady up. Now there’ll be two of you, and we’ll never get out of here. Get a move on, will you?

    I’ll go, Harold said. I’m all set.

    Curt had opened the door a crack, but now he closed it again, grinning, and shook his head. He watched Arthur cross slowly to his bunk and take his blue flannel shirt from the wall, and then he looked at Harold.

    I gotta have Art, he said, in case the cat’s black, and big as a horse. I wouldn’t know what to do with a cat that was black and big as a horse. And Joe Sam won’t be any good this mornin’. He was already talkin’ to himself last night, before the snow’d even started. Besides, he added, looking back at Arthur, and still grinning, he’d be for the cat.

    You can’t blame him, Arthur said mildly.

    Don’t even know as I can trust Art, for that matter. He’s gettin’ awful fond of that black painter himself.

    I am at that, Arthur said. I was just dreaming it was loose.

    Gee, Curt said, making the big eyes of a child in awe. No wonder you’re in no hurry. I’ll tell you what, Art, he said confidentially, I’ll make me a special bullet. I’ll melt up some of your dreams—they’re plenty heavy enough—and make a magic bullet, and you can put the medicine on it, huh? Only, he finished sharply, do it some time this week, will you?

    He opened the door again, and through the opening they could see the mother standing at the stove in her old gray flannel bathrobe, with her gray hair still hanging loose down her back. The light from the lamp was on her back, but her face was toward the stove and in the dark.

    Harold looked at her out there, and said, I’ll go, Curt. He grinned. It’s a hundred to one anyway it’s not black.

    I don’t know, kid, Curt said seriously, still mocking Arthur. It’s the first snowstorm, and you remember how upset Joe Sam was last night. No, kid, he said, grinning back at him, you gotta stay here and tend to the future. You’re the white hope of the Bridges. You don’t think she wants to talk to Arthur, do you? He laughed, and went into the kitchen, leaving the door open.

    Arthur sat down on the edge of his bunk to pull his boots on. He’s right about that, Hal, he said. You better break Gwen in to the rest of us kind of gradual, and you better do it yourself.

    In the kitchen Curt was saying, Something’s at the stock, Ma.

    I heard ’em, the mother said.

    I’m goin’ up there.

    The two in the bunk-room could see him taking the lantern down from the shelf behind the stove. Then he went out of sight toward the table with it.

    By yourself? the mother asked.

    Curt’s voice, half laughing, and muffled by the wall, answered, No, ma’am. I’m takin’ Art with me. We got a notion it might be the black painter.

    The mother set the stove lids back on and pulled the big iron skillet over onto them, and without looking around said, scornfully, Black painter. She moved away toward the sink in the far corner, saying, It might as well be, though, for all you’ll ever find, goin’ out there now.

    Harold said, He’ll be like that all the way, if you go.

    Arthur stood up and stamped his heels down into his boots and crossed to the big pine chest in the corner beyond his bunk.

    I’m used to it, he said. After about so long, you don’t hear it.

    He lifted the lid of the chest and began to search down through the blankets and clothes packed in it.

    In the kitchen the mother’s voice was saying, the little Arkansas drag in it, slow and flat, You’ll put some food in your stomach before you go, and then, after Curt had answered something they couldn’t understand, It won’t even be daylight for an hour yet. Shut that door, will you? There’s a draft comin’ in here like out of an ice-house.

    Curt’s boots sounded across the kitchen floor and the bunk-room door was closed.

    Arthur let down the lid on the chest and straightened up with the cowhide parka in his hands. He held it up and sniffed at it.

    Mother goes a little heavy on the camphor, he said. He took the camphor bag out of one pocket, and poked it back under the lid of the chest. There was more than a camphor bag in the other pocket, though, and when he had emptied it, he stood there looking at what he held on his hand.

    Got some unfinished whittling, he said. This one’s an Indian skinning something, you can see that. But this one, he said, smiling and holding it up between his thumb and forefinger for Harold to see. Only the first cuts had been made on it, many small, stubborn cuts, like ripples on a wave, but all going with the grain and the shape of the wood.

    Might as well be God, for all I can make of it now, he said. Mountain mahogany, he added, letting the piece down into his hand again and staring at it a moment longer, trying to remember. Probably I just got worn out tryin’ to whittle it.

    He dropped the two pieces of wood back into the pocket of the parka and poked the camphor that had come out with them into the chest. He remained there, bent over and holding the lid of the chest up, as the wind returned, wrestling the house and chafing the window with snow, and then rose roaring into the steep of pines. There was no other sound behind it, and he let the lid down and straightened up. He looked at Harold and smiled and shook his head.

    There won’t be many tracks left in that, Harold agreed.

    It’s not the little dreamers that hunt black painters, Arthur said softly. He crossed to the table, carrying the parka over his arm, and turned the lamp down.

    Get the door, will you, Hal?

    Harold went to the kitchen door and took hold of the latch, and Arthur curved a hand around the far side of the lamp chimney and leaned over and blew against it. For a moment the huge shadow angel his shoulders made across the beams of the ceiling fluttered wildly, and all the tiny, watchful, metal eyes winked rapidly, and then the room was dark.

    Curt generally gets what he goes after, though, Harold said.

    He generally does, Arthur said, and his boots sounded, coming slowly toward the door. But he likes a few tracks to go on, he added.

    They help, all right, Harold said, and opened the door and held it, watching Arthur come up the shaft of light it let in.

    2

    The kitchen was already full of the sound and smell of the bacon on the hot pan. The mother was standing at the stove, cutting chunks of potato into the pan with the bacon, and she didn’t look around when Arthur, and then Harold behind him, came in.

    Curt was sitting facing her at the round table in the middle of the room, with the big east window full of darkness behind him. He had his red coat on, and the old black sombrero was on the back of his head. The lighted lantern stood on the floor beside his chair. Its flame appeared small and smoky in there, making only a little pool of orange light in the shadow under the table.

    The ceiling of the kitchen was very high, to make room for the stairs that went up against the north wall to a small landing with one closed door on it, and there was only one lamp, with a china bowl and a big china shade, hanging from a long, spring-chain over the center of the table. The walls and the ceiling were whitewashed though, and all the doors, the outside one in the corner behind Curt, and the one on the landing, and the two in the north wall, one under the landing and the other at the foot of the stairs, were painted white, so the room seemed full of light after the bunk-room. There were small, hand-painted flowers scattered over the shade of the lamp that made separate, fluttering shadows, like moths, on the walls and ceiling, and the bowl of the lamp made a circle of shadow on the table. Curt peered across through the shadow of the bowl when Arthur came out, and saw him stop for a moment to get used to the change from the bunk-room. He looked at the cowhide parka over Arthur’s arm and grinned.

    My God, he said. I ask for a medicine man, and what do I get? A priest again. A damned monk. Well, that’s next best, I guess, ain’t it? Not too much difference. Especially when the monk’s a prophet too. Did you know your monk was a prophet too, now, Ma?

    Don’t blaspheme, the mother said, but she spoke flatly, as if only out of habit, and she didn’t look around this time either. You may as well set down, she told Arthur and Harold. There’s nothing to hurry for, that I can see, and I’ll be a few minutes yet with your breakfast.

    Harold closed the bunk-room door and went around the table and sat down with his back to the stairs. Arthur, moving more slowly, came to the chair on the near side and hung the parka over the back of it and sat down. He leaned both elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes slowly with his long hands, and then sat there with his eyes still covered by his hands.

    He really is, though, Curt said. He had a dream that showed him it was the black painter out there. That’s why I gotta take him along.

    I had a dream of my own, the mother said, and it ain’t left me much in the mood for jokes.

    More dreams, Curt said, chuckling. And Joe Sam was at his before he went to bed even. The place is crawling with ’em. Did you have bad dreams too, young ‘un? he asked Harold.

    Harold smiled a little and shook his head.

    Good ones, eh? By Chrimus, so would I, if I was you. I wouldn’t want to ever wake up. If I had a girl like . . .

    Watch your mouth, the mother said sharply.

    Now, what did I say to make you go jumpin’ on me like that? He winked at Harold. It’s not as if Hal, here, hadn’t ever heard of such things. Or Gwen either, as far as that goes, he added judiciously. Now I have a notion, just to look at her, that . . .

    The mother turned around with the knife and a potato still in her hands and looked at Curt. Her face was like Arthur’s, long and narrow and tired-looking, with deep hollows at the temples and under the cheek-bones, and her eyes set back in deep hollows. The lines across her forehead and beside her mouth were much deeper and less broken than Arthur’s, though, and her tired look wasn’t gentle or quiet. It wasn’t the look that comes from lack of sleep, or from too much work, or from struggling against someone else’s will. It was the look that comes from war inside which is never ended, but never lost, either. When the will that sustained her in this war was turned outward, free of the enemy it had inside, it became like the threat of a weapon. No matter who she was looking at, everyone there would feel that she was looking at him, and that a weapon was pointed at him.

    It was like that now. She was looking at Curt, but Harold, seeing her face, laid his big fingers over the edge of the table and looked down at them, and Arthur, almost at once, looked away from her and watched the shadows like moths on the wall.

    I told you to watch your mouth, the mother said.

    Curt tried to keep it a joke still. Now, Mother, he said, too loudly, it’s not Hal that’s the monk. He’s pretty near twenty, and he . . .

    Did you hear me, Curtis?

    The anger gathered suddenly in Curt’s face, and his eyes began a little, blinding dance. Look, he said, I’m no kid either. I’m thirty-seven years old. Arthur here’s forty, he said to make an ally. The old man, for Christ’s sake, is over seventy. And you go bossing the whole bunch of us like we was kids. We can’t even make a little joke, for God’s sake. Well, we ain’t kids, even if you never . . .

    You don’t have to shout, the mother said. My hearing’s as good as it ever was, and the girls is already awake in there. Do you want Gwen Williams to hear the names you’re callin’ her?

    Jesus, Curt said, not so loudly, but as if he would burst. He doubled his hands into fists and pressed them down on the table hard enough to lift his shoulders. What did I call her? Just tell me one thing I called her. He looked at Arthur, and then at Harold. Did you hear me call her anything?

    It didn’t take any fancy guessing to know what you meant.

    Look, Curt said, if we’re going to start guessing, then what I’ve thought about Gwen Williams is goddamned brotherly love compared to what you . . .

    Harold said, Let it go, Curt, will you?

    Curt turned on him. You stickin’ up for her now? You know as well as I do what she thinks of your . . .

    I think what I think, the mother said sharply, and I’ll keep it to myself till there’s some use to say it. If you’re in such a tearin’ hurry to get out there and see what you can see in pitch dark and a blizzard, you better be gettin’ them ponies saddled while I’m puttin’ the breakfast on.

    The veins began to bulge on Curt’s throat and forehead, and he stared at her back with the little, mad dance in his eyes. By Jesus, he began finally, but got no further before the mother said, turning over the potatoes with a fork as she spoke, And there’s no need that I can see for your takin’ holy names in vain every time you open your mouth.

    Curt stood up suddenly, pushing his chair back with a loud, scraping noise, but keeping his fists on the table. Arthur waved a hand at him slowly and shook his head in time to the waving, like a man taking his side but saying it had gone far enough for now. Curt turned his head to stare at him, and Arthur pointed at the closed door at the foot of the stairs. Curt set his mouth, but listened, and heard the murmur of women’s voices behind the door. While he listened one voice made a quick, excited laugh. Then the other voice laughed too, a lower sound, full of soft, easy amusement. Curt flushed as if the women had seen through the door how he was checked like a small boy and were laughing at him.

    To hell with ’em, he said. If a man . . . but his voice was only a mutter, and he didn’t finish. He straightened up slowly, and then stood there staring at the other three, one at a time. None of them said anything, or even looked at him. The mother, with her back turned, went on stirring the sizzling potatoes in the pan. Slowly he made a small, angry smile, and looked around at them again, but now as if they were enemies already cowed, and not worth even that much attention. He picked up the lantern and set it on the table and turned the flame a little higher to stop the smoking.

    That’s not a bad idea at that, he said. At least, if horses have dreams, they don’t get up sour and talk about ’em.

    He picked up the lantern and went to the outside door, but stopped there again, and said, And when I get back, we’re leavin’ pronto. Get me?

    I’ll have your breakfast on, the mother said. It’ll be an hour yet before there’s light enough to see what you’re doing anyway.

    We don’t need any light to get to the creek, Curt said, and that’s where it come from.

    He opened the door. The roaring of the pines deepened and a gust of cold wind came in, driving a thin serpent of snow across the floor and nearly blowing the lamp out, so the shadow moths fluttered wildly on the walls.

    When I get back, he yelled, to be heard over the wind, and went out, slamming the door behind him. The flame of the lamp steadied and rose again, and the moths danced small and gentle in their places. Slowly the fine, white powder on the floor vanished. The high woman’s voice spoke in the north bedroom

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